Monday, June 1, 2015

DAP decries complicity of cops in custodial deaths

6:24PM May 31, 2015

By Terence Netto

DAP decries complicity of cops in custodial deaths

Malaysians can no longer ignore instances of
police responsibility for custodial deaths after the discovery of mass
graves at the Thai-Malaysia border pointed to security forces'
complicity in the brutalisation of Rohingya refugees.

DAP national vice-chair M Kulasegaran said the phenomenon of custodial
deaths had assumed the status of a national stain over which the police
are nonchalant.

But now that the unmarked graves of Rohingyas on the Malaysia-Thai
border point to police complicity, the cops must find their apathy
unconscionable.

“What more will it take for our police to realise that human life is not
something one can be casual about and that refugees and criminal
suspects cannot be treated with impunity,” queried the MP for Ipoh
Barat, a frequent critic of police apathy on the issue of custodial
deaths.

The federal legislator welcomed news of the suspension of 12 police
personnel in connection with the trafficking of Rohingya refugees but he
regretted what he described as “the continued police apathy towards
custodial deaths on the home front.”

Kulasegaran (photo) was speaking in the wake of the death of Shashikumar Selvam, a prisoner of Johor police who was found dead earlier this week.

Shashikumar is the latest case in a long series of deaths of suspects or
convicts while in police custody, an inventory that has led human
rights advocates to clamour for the setting up of the Independent Police
Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC).

The panel was a recommendation of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into
the management of the police force that the administration of then Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi empaneled in 2003.

The setting up of IPCMC was stiff-armed by a cabal of senior police
officers who said they were opposed to it. The government backpedaled in
the face of senior officers' resistance.

A watered down version of the IPCMC, the Enforcement Agencies Integrity
Commission (EAIC) was instituted but this panel has been unable to stem
the tide of custodial deaths.

“It is a toothless agency and should be abolished in preference to the
IPCMC which is the mechanism that will remove the national stain of
custodial deaths and bring closure to the issue,” said Kulasegaran.